“Order!” countered the Viceroy. “You know very well that Benissimo is in counsel with your Prime, Atticus. As a representative of the Twelve, you of all people should know that the children’s ability is to be trusted. Are they not why we are here? Was it not they that saved the Veil less than two years ago?”
“Enough!” bellowed the bear king. “Ursus comes because his father’s father made an oath. An oath drawn in blood. We have not forgotten how the alliance repaid our sacrifice. The Bear-clan say NAY!”
Ned watched in horror as the Wolf-pack followed suit.
Then a red-faced attendant came crashing through the hall’s main doors.
“THE PRIME IS MURDERED!” he shouted. “THE RINGMASTER – HER KILLER!”
A second of stunned silence.
“I have my answer – BETRAYAL!” bellowed Fife. “Guards, seize them!”
And as he spoke his skin turned to a dark metallic pewter, all semblance of the man beneath lost in living armour. His guards, both tin-skins themselves, turned to bronze and brass, and the room erupted as the remainder of the gathering drew their weapons and pointed them at Ned, Lucy, Jonny and George.
Most Wanted
onny Magik barely moved: a trembling arm slipped into his breast pocket and retrieved a single page from a monthly calendar. The date on the page was already marked in his inks.
“Magic!” hissed the Fey leader’s thumb-sized guardian.
“I’ve been called worse,” smiled the sin-eater, before whispering “Hold” into the paper and tearing it in half.
The room miraculously froze – every angered face, every drawn dagger, apart from two sets of attendees on either side of him not caught in the spell’s blast. A shape-shifting contingent from India to their left and a pair of feather-skinned Swan maidens from Germany. The Indians were arming themselves in the guise of two dragolisks, but before their scaly forms had set, George knocked them unceremoniously to the floor.
“Do forgive us, chaps, but we really must be on our way,” he said, his words sounding calm but his arms flexed for hurting.
At the sight of his bristling fur, the Swan maidens backed into their seats, their feathers ruffling flat in compliance.
“We have only minutes, let’s make them count,” said a visibly pained Jonny Magik.
“George, pick him up, he’s not well,” urged Lucy.
With the sin-eater over one shoulder, George led the way, crashing through solid oak doors in single splintery bounds. Behind them a contingent of the Viceroy’s men had only just taken in the disarray in the great hall, and the few guards unlucky enough to be patrolling the corridors were immediately flattened by George’s boulder-like fists.
“I don’t understand!” gasped Ned in between breaths. “Why would Bene kill Madame Oublier – what’s going on?!”
“Barbarossa; it must be!” managed Lucy. “He’s turned them all against us!”
And she was right: Ned and his escort had gone from respected speakers at a gathering of allies to the top of the Hidden’s most-wanted list, and all in the blink of an eye.
“What do we do?” he panted.
“We get out of here, and quickly. Now RUN!”
Escape
he further they pushed into the corridors, the more maze-like the passageways became, till they stopped at a dead end of marble-walled corridor, beyond which lay a balcony overlooking the Celtic Sea. There was a heavy pounding of brass legs behind them as five heavily armed tin-skins cut off any hope of retreat.
“You are hereby under arrest, by order of the Twelve,” barked their captain, closing the gap between them in long strides.
George put down Jonny Magik and held his ground, then raised a fist.
“These children are under my protection, old chum. Take one more step forward and I shall forget we were ever allies.”
“The Twelve have already forgotten and my skin is bullet-proof, monkey.”
George snarled wildly and was making ready to test the man’s metal, when Ned stepped forward. Gorrn swelled out of his shadow, pulling himself across the ground and crawling up the corridor’s walls. He did not need to be asked, politely or otherwise.
As Ned paced towards their leader, his head scrambled for ideas. Breathe, he thought, and his mind cleared.
Tin-skins were renowned behind the Veil for their resilience to any kind of weapon. But any metal, even the kind that walked and talked, had a weak point. Generating enough heat would kill the man within, though Ned was under no illusion that once he attacked they would be more than happy to end both him and his allies.
No, he realised. Not heat: but cold.
Focus on the outcome, he thought.
His ring thrummed and the air around the tin-skin shimmered with energy. Ned forced the metal’s atoms closer together, taking great care to only affect the “skin” of the man in front of him. Closer and closer, colder and colder till the captain groaned.
“Wh-What are you doing, boy! Stop!”
The captain ground to a standstill, his anguished expression a mixture of surprise and frost-rimed fear. In a blur of streaking shadow, Gorrn whipped across the marble and removed his sword.
“So, so cold, I beg of you, STOP!”
But Ned’s anger had taken over. White frost flowed across the tin-skin’s surface and began to burrow deeper. All along the ground and at the other soldiers’ feet, more ice started to form.
“PLEASE,” begged the captain.
“YeSsS,” said the voice.
A hand, heavy with fur, gripped Ned’s shoulder.
“Not like this, dear boy … never like this.”
Ned blinked. What was he doing? He relaxed his mind, let the cold recede, but not so much that the captain and his men were able to move.
There came an angry screech of flapping wings and clenched claws at the balcony behind. Ned turned. A war-owl stood there, a rider on its back.
Ned let go fully of his hold over the tin-skin and the captain’s lieutenants closed the gap. Ned now stood between a vast war-owl and the readied tin-skins on his other side. Behind them, more of the Viceroy’s men came rushing down the corridor, followed by the Viceroy himself, with several of the summit’s now-recovered guests.
“Brace yourself, child, this is going to be bad,” murmured Jonny Magik.
The owl lowered his head and prepared to charge. It was only then that Lucy could make out the rider and see that he wore no armour.
“Ned, it’s – it’s Benissimo!”
“Aark!”
In a furious roar of plated feather, the beast screeched forward, its talons propelling it at lightning speed and its great beak poised to rend flesh from bone.
“Get down!” roared the Ringmaster, and Ned and his escort hit the marble flooring hard.
There was a crash of metal lance on metal skin, as the owl tore forward, knocking Atticus’s men into a pile.
“I’ve room for one more,” shouted Bene, before seeing the state the sin-eater was now in. “Odin’s beard – Jonny! Quickly, George, help him aboard.”
Then, behind him, another owl arrived at the balcony in a blaze of claw and feather. This new arrival was different in that its armour was a dazzling gold, and it had no rider.
“That’s the Viceroy’s own owl,” said Benissimo. “There’s room for you, Ned, and the girl. You’ll have to pilot her yourself; quickly now, climb on!”
Ned didn’t move.
“George,” he said. “What about George? We can’t leave him.”
The Viceroy caught up with them and drew his sword. “Ned,” he said. “You’re as good of heart as the stories say you are, but she won’t take the weight. Bene’s obviously been framed – but this lot are in no mood to listen. The ape will have to make his own way. George, if you swing up above the balcony, you’ll find a rooftop – from there you have our city’s protective canopy to carry you. My men and I will hold these traitors off.”
“You’ll not wait a second!” said George to Ned.
“Not for me – go on, dear boy, I’ve seen worse scrapes than this,” grinned the ape to his ward.
Ned nodded reluctantly as the Viceroy’s guards took their leader’s instruction and turned on the assailants in the corridor. If they could buy George a few moments, there was the slimmest chance he might make his escape.
Ned climbed on to the enormous gold owl, followed by Lucy. He grabbed hold of the leather reins and she clasped her hands round his stomach.
With a beat of its giant wings, Benissimo’s great owl took to the skies, with the Viceroy’s close behind it.
“Hold tight!” yelled Ned, and his stomach was yanked to the back of his throat. They plunged vertically, the isle’s black rock careering past them and the sea below approaching at frightening speed.
A handful of seconds ahead of them, the Ringmaster’s bird arced gracefully upwards as Ned’s continued its dive.
“How do you steer this thing?” he yelped.
“The reins, pull the reins!” screamed Lucy.
Ned pulled with all his might and the bird’s wings filled with air. In a great heave of wind and arm-length feather, it circled back up past the cliff edge and steadied itself by Benissimo and Jonny Magik’s owl.
Down below, Ned saw two airships that had been moored to the palace now scrambling for take-off. They were bearing the Twelve’s insignia – Roman numerals and an all-seeing eye. Perhaps they were loyal to the Viceroy, though, perhaps they were on their side—
Bang.
A musket shot tore out from one of the airships, just missing Benissimo’s owl, but quite obviously aimed straight at him.
“We’ve got to get back to the Gabriella before they get airborne!” yelled Lucy. “Go faster!”
Which was when Ned spotted him, above the city and pounding across the girded glass of its protective rain-cover.
“George! It’s George, he’s made it to the roof!”
Below him the citizens of St Albertsburg watched in wonder as a mountain of dark-furred muscle ran hundreds of feet above their streets and markets, over the glass structure that spread above their houses and places of work. But the city was vast and George a single speck with more than a mile of slippery glass between himself and the Gabriella.
Suddenly the great ape slipped and fell, sliding down a polished slope and landing on a shelf. There was an audible crack as the glass beneath him fractured.
Ned gasped, but George scrambled to his feet, undeterred. Then fell again, time and again, every slipped foothold a cruel torture as Ned watched powerless from above – but each time George got to his feet, over and over, as he desperately made his way towards the edge of the city.
Gradually, he reached the structure’s highest point, as Ned and Lucy circled on their owl, narrowly avoiding the musket fire from the hostile airships.
Ned looked down in horror. He could see the glass cracking, lines spreading from where George’s feet were pounding as he ran, the iron spars getting further and further apart …
“The glass won’t hold,” said Ned. “We have to go back!”
Ned yanked on the great bird’s reins, left and right, but this time the bird held its course, its path locked to Benissimo and the waiting Gabriella below.
“It won’t barking turn! Lucy, do something!”
Just as he said it, a section of glass beneath George’s feet gave way. The citizens below screamed in terror as the panel shattered on the streets below. George leapt at a bare girder, his fingers greedily digging into its iron for help. Ned watched helplessly as the gap between them widened, as faster and faster the Viceroy’s owl flew, till Ned felt something rushing towards him and turned …
The Viceroy’s owl spread its great wings, bracing itself for impact before dropping to the ground in a spray of dirt. They had reached the Gabriella, at the top of the island’s narrow runway, and dear George was now hopelessly far behind. All along the airship’s rigging, crewhands were already making ready to leave.
“Get aboard!” ordered Benissimo, who was propping up a half-conscious sin-eater and half dragging him on to the deck.
“Thanks,” said Ned, turning to the owl, which gave an avian bow, then flapped into the air again.
Ned and Lucy stumbled through the grass and up to the Gabriella’s walkway.
“Throw the ballast,” yelled one of the Guffstavson brothers.
“We’re not leaving without George!” screamed Ned.
“I’m sorry, pup, we have to go, we—” began the Ringmaster, but then his eyes grew wide.
Ned turned to see airships closing in, rising towards them at a pace. On the lead ship, he could just make out its captain, standing on the deck, pointing down. Beneath them was the speeding figure of strained muscle that was George, racing up the glass canopy.
Swoosh.
A harpoon fired from one of the airships, burying itself into the glass just a few feet away from George.
Swoosh.
Another and another. Ned watched as the airships fired repeated volleys. George stumbled, changed course and stumbled again. It was a horrid sight – they were hunting him down like vermin and all Ned could do was watch.
“They’re nearly in range of us,” warned Benissimo.
One of the Tortellini boys went to untie the mooring ropes. Without thinking, Ned held out his arm and his ring finger crackled. A blast of rushing air shot out in front of him and an unsuspecting Enrico was thrown halfway across the deck.
“YesSs,” came the voice in his head, slow and quiet.
“We have to stay and fight,” demanded Ned. “Jonny, do something!”
“Damn your loyal heart, boy,” roared Benissimo. “You’re as wilful as your father!”
Calmly and without a word, Jonny Magik pulled a sheaf of papers from his breast pocket. The man’s strength was all but spent but he would use it to the last.
Suddenly there were two more swooshes from the decks of the enemy ships.
The first shot blasted into the glass of the canopy, missing George by a handful of inches, the second harpoon hurtled through the air and straight into the fleeing ape’s fur.
It knocked him off the glass just as he was reaching the end, brought him down far and hard to the rocky ground below, achingly close to the summit where the Gabriella waited, yet so impossibly out of reach. He landed in a shower of shattering rock and the sickening spray of hot red blood.
“No!” screamed Ned.
“YeEsS,” said the voice.
Out of the Frying Pan
hey all moved as one.
Benissimo shouted orders to the crew.
Jonny Magik worked feverishly on the paper in his hands.
Ned took care of the one thing that the others could not.
As another harpoon was launched from the airship, Ned’s ring finger crackled to life. The sight of his broken friend would have been enough to power a dozen rings if he’d had them, but Ned only needed one.
The ground where George lay erupted around him, tearing upwards like a wall of liquid rock before turning to hardened steel. Ned had learnt to strengthen his structures with the careful layering of geometrical shapes. He concentrated, the ring buzzed, and a fanned half-circle of protective metal now surrounded his friend.
The harpoon buckled angrily against Ned’s wall, and the ape stirred.
The Gabriella started to rise – Ned turned to see crew members throwing ballast off the side.
“Benissimo!” he shouted. “We are not leaving him.”
“Hurry up, George!” yelled Lucy, as another pair of harpoons were fired at Ned’s shield.
In the distance, three more airships approached from the city. They were not the Viceroy’s.
The paper in Jonny Magik’s weakened hands began to take on a life of its own, bending and folding as his incantation hummed in the air. The paper moved faster and faster, growing in size and complexity until a dragon of folded magic erupted from his arms.
“Fly,” whispered the magician, and his pape
r flew. As it left his hands and arms, the broken magician slumped slowly to the ship’s deck, his eyes closed, his easy smile forgotten.
The paper, now a large swooping dragon, flew at the approaching airships.
Below them, Ned saw a bloodied George raising himself on to his knees as three more harpoons were launched. Ned grimaced with concentration, pulling more rock from the earth in an effort to save him. Two harpoons crashed angrily into his new defences … the third tore through the gas-filled zeppelin above the Gabriella’s rigging.
“They’re trying to bring us down!” yelled Lucy.
Swoosh! and another harpoon sailed through the Gabriella’s canopy.
Everything was happening at once. A war-owl, one of the Viceroy’s men on it, was diving down on the first airship, its rider slashing at the soldiers aboard with his sword. Jonny Magik’s papery dragon was lashing at the crew of another.
But it wasn’t enough.
The Gabriella was losing lift and George was still painfully far from the hanging rope ladders he would need to cling on to in order to escape.
“Ned, the holes,” shouted Benissimo. “Focus on the holes.”
Ned looked at the flaps of broken canvas and willed them together in a flurry of perfect stitching. Thread after thread came alive and worked itself back together, but no sooner had one hole been mended than another took its place.
“Lucy, this is useless!”
Lucy took his hand.
“What’s the best form of defence, Ned?”
The line had been drummed into him for over eighteen months.
“Offence.”
“Well? I’m a Medic. I can’t do it!”
Ned closed his eyes and focused on a pile of cannonballs next to Bertha and her sisters. His Amplification Engine lifted them into the air and there was an angry yawn of bending metal as he Saw the projectiles move in his mind till they changed their form into deadly three-pronged tridents.
The Gold Thief Page 22